You're listening to Draft Kings Network. Welcome again to South Beach sessions.

We have got a teacher.

We're going to learn something here today and a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

Vietan win is with us, and you can go to vietwinn. Info if you want his works

that include a book that is now out and the book that you won the Pulitzer Prize with,

with your debut novel, The Sympathizer. You're somebody, refugee is sort of part of your identity publicly. So thank

you for joining us. Interesting times in America. I'm being diplomatic now. I can't imagine how

you're experiencing what it is that you're witnessing. But right before we turned on the cameras,

you were talking about how similar Cubans and Vietnamese people are. What have been your observations there?

Well, Dan, first of all, thanks for having me. With the observations, well, you know, Cubans

ended up in Florida and most of the Vietnamese or the largest community who fled from Vietnam

in 1975 ended up in California. So we're literally on opposite sides of the coast. Both

communities are dominated by their anti-communist factions, and both have been using that kind of anti-communism,

both to cement their cultural communities where they are, but also to advance their political

interests in the United States. And obviously, the Cubans have been actually much more

effective at doing that than the Vietnamese Americans have.

So we have a few politicians, but nothing on the scale of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz and the ability

of the Cuban exile community to determine a great degree of American politics is something that I

think a certain portion of the Vietnamese community would envy.

Tell me about winning the Pulitzer Prize and how it is that it changed your life to have

a debut novel that you wrote a little bit later into your writing career, but still your

debut novel to win that prize.

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